By Robert Lucke
Headline might read, "Coburn can't go to the Malta Rodeo but meets his Hero."
It was July 3, 1901. The Coburn ranch just north east of the Little Rocky Mountains was bustling with summer chores.
Wallace Coburn, about age 15, was trying to figure how he could get to the Fourth of July Rodeo in Malta a day early.
Wallace Coburn was the youngest of the Coburn children. He lived with his mother and father in Great Falls where he went to school but when school was out he was on the train to Malta, then to the Coburn ranch where he spent his summers and loved every minute of it.
Going to a really great rodeo was important to Wallace but how to convince his brother Bob, the ranch foreman, that he should get two days off instead of just the Fourth of July, that was the question.
Wallace's future was a mixed bag depending on who you talked to. His brother Bob wanted him to go the Butte School of Mines and learn the mining business as the Coburn's were in the mining business. His father wanted him to go to Bozeman and learn farming and ranching. As for young Wallace, he wanted to be just like his hero, Harvey Logan, aka Kid Curry.
Wallace was just about to ask his brother for the day off right after breakfast when his brother came to him and asked him to take a string of horses up to the top of a nearby butte and just wait with the horses for the day. If something happened Wallace would know what to do. If nothing happened, Wallace was to bring the horses back home at dinner time.
Wallace was very upset with such a stupid job to have to do the day before the Fourth of July but he took the horses and headed east to the top of a butte and prepared himself to spend the day in what little shade the few pine trees on the top of the butte provided.
Nothing happened hour after hour after hour. Then about 4pm in the afternoon, Wallace saw a puff of smoke on the prairie that could only be the dust from several horses being ridden very fast. That puff of smoke seemed to be heading for Wallace's butte. Finally, the horses started to climb the butte and before you knew it, Wallace was met by his hero Kid Curry and several other men on what were obviously tired horses. They traded horses for Wallace's fresh horses quickly, saddled them up and before you could blink, they were on their way south into the Little Rockies themselves.
Wallace took the tired horses (which he noticed were branded with the Circle C brand) down the butte and got home just in time for the cook to put a giant steak on the stove. After eating the steak at the cook house, Wallace headed to the main ranch house where he asked his brother what it was all about.
Bob told Wallace to sit quietly by the front door with a six shooter in his hand and not let anyone see him if anyone came to the door. Bob said that he thought Wallace would find out soon enough what it was all about. Bob sat in an easy chair in the livingroom reading a book.
Sure enough, in an hour, about seven or eight horsemen rode up on very tired horses. There was a knock on the door and Bob opened it. There stood the sheriff of Valley County and his posse. He announced to Bob that Kid Curry and his gang had that morning robbed the Great Northern Railroad Mail car at Wagner, Montana. The posse had been chasing them but now needed a hot meal and some fresh horses. Bob told the sheriff he had no horses to spare but for a buck each, the cook would fix each of the posse a steak dinner. The sheriff agreed and off to the cook house they all went.
Wallace tagged along to help the cook prepare the meals. While cooking the steaks the cook looked at Wallace and said, "I don't know but you know I sure don't like that sheriff or posse. They are too bossy and think they are really something."
Wallace agreed. The cook continued by asking Wallace what he thought of giving the posse something in their food that would slow them down for awhile.
Wallace thought that was a great idea so the cook sprinkled something on the steaks and served them. The men ate quickly, very quickly, and then took off for the Little Rockies.
Only later did the Coburn ranch hands hear that when the posse got going up Bear Gulch to Zortman they all had such terrible diarrhea that they were stopped for a day and a half.
Kid Curry and his gang got away and the loot from the robbery was never recovered. Some say that it is buried to this day on Thornhill Butte. But that is a story for another day.
Next day, the Fourth, Wallace went to a wonderful rodeo in Malta but it could not compare to when he met his hero on the top of a butte on July 3, 1901.
Something that puzzled Great Northern authorities for years. How come those horses all had the Circle C brand on them? They never got an answer from anyone from the Circle C.
